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What started out as a sample application to showcase the latest UI technology from Microsoft called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) resulted in a sample to the genealogy community of innovation.

At the beginning of this year, the company I work for hired Vertigo Software to do a prototype application using WPF. Part of the portfolio that Vertigo shared with us during the pre-hiring phase was an end-to-end reference sample that they did for Microsoft. The exciting thing about this sample is that it is a genealogy application. Family.Show version 1 was released in April in preparation for the MIX 07 conference and version 2 was released in July.

This is not a full-fledged application and it wasn’t designed by experts in the genealogy community. But don’t dismiss it too quickly. This sample shows the imagination and innovation that can come when user interaction experts, software developers, and graphics designers work together. I especially like the different visualizations used in the application and will talk about them specifically in a future post.

Here is the feature list published by Vertigo:

Quickly build your family tree

Add photos easily via drag-and-drop

Create advanced family tree visualizations with pan and zoom support

See what your family tree looked like years ago using the Time Explorer

Tell your family members’ story using rich editing and formatting controls

Mine your family data with statistical filtering and sorting

Import and export family trees to GEDCOM 5.5, a standard genealogy format

Change the look of the entire application by choosing a different skin

This technology is just the key component to further genealogy research. Please when you have time visit my blog to learn more about genealogy methods and success stories. http://genealogydatabases.blogspot.com